


habitual

by epistaxiophilia



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1794232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistaxiophilia/pseuds/epistaxiophilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wherein i am really tired and i just don't wanna anymore</p><p>and neither does bucky, so we've got that going for us. also, breaking into his old apartment, scaring teenagers like a damned hooligan. thanks for user hawkeye for just being a huge sport and telling me all about brooklyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	habitual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawkeye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkeye/gifts).



     Dark and ever quiet, as quiet as these busy streets do; on a weeknight, late night. Sirens ever present and voices ever drawing and bouncing across the streets. Things that were similar and things that weren't.

     Memory in his feet, memory in his hands, ears, eyes. No, not his eyes, places where you could see things like a double exposed photograph, overlayed and inherently 'incorrect'. Despite the flaws it was comforting in ways he didn't understand. He could run and hide and seek, across states and occasionally countries; but when he stumbled into a place in his mind completely lost, he would wake up from himself, again, in these less then tired streets. Why do you keep taking me here, legs? Arms, hands, ears, eyes, eyes?

     He slipped in often and unnoticed, in the place he felt his hand draw softest across the doorknob, familiar in it's placement but not necessarily in its style. Instinctively he slides his foot to the right, waiting for resistance from some object he couldn't place, but finding none it returns to his side at a loss. Leaning at the floor and pawing around the space on the step retrieved nothing that was seeming retrievable, and for a moment he returned with something more invasive and directed with the left of his appendages, slowly and silently clicking at the locked door until free. At first everything about the interior was wrong, from the sight to the smell, the feeling, the heat radiating from the furnace. Tapping his boots of dirt at the doorstep, wiping across the mat to free the heavy rubber of wet debris. He took two steps forward, and stopped. He was not instructed or invited.

     Fifth time in his ear lent to quiet, feminine whispers, _there's a man, there's a man in the house, at the door._ No, there wasn't supposed to be anyone here. This isn't right, is this the right place? Wasn't it his? Wasn't in theirs? _Yeah, so what. No, listen, he's been here before, I think he's just lost. He's never done anything, he just stands by the door._ Well yes, it's my door. _He has to leave._ Alright. So he does, there's no reason to object. He wasn't chased, he wasn't hiding, this was a terrible hiding spot. He had to find him here eventually.

     Sixth he was greeted sound. Voices, up late at night, which was odd, but he never would doubt his ability toward silence. _See, there, look._ Look, yes, I can look, he paces forward past where he had never gone before, idling a reserved glance into a dark room with couches; laptop, two younger civilians sitting and looking. The male pointed at the screen, _there, look. Doesn't it look like him?_ Yes, it sort of did look like him, didn't it. Between the all them, himself and the men he was avoiding. Damn, he was supposed to be avoiding that as well, his picture on a screen. It was so hard. It was so hard and nobody understood; especially now that he had literally no cover but himself. So hard that in his self direction he simply kept returning to the same places. They did not notice when he entered, and they did not notice when he left.

     An in order, the seventh time, he was greeted with scent. Before he had even entered. A small stool blocked the entrance marginally; but atop it was a flat box, and on the box was paper, and what the paper said was 'EAT ME'. No, not the paper. He stared at it for quite some time, stuck between his habitual needs and the needs somehow even more primal. Eventually yes, he lifted the box carefully with his fleshed hand, and did they give him some sort of weird offering? Was this pizza? Were you giving pizza to the strange metal armed man who kept breaking and entering into your house? He thought kids were smarter then this. Then again, he also thought he would be smarter then to eat the floor pizza, but, looking a gift horse in the mouth. He entered as he always would, and stood, and took in the feeling. It became more and more nostalgic every time; and even more so when he didn't have the pit of his stomach gnawing at his senses. Ever keen they were to hear footsteps _, sshh, hush and wait._

    _“ You know my mom got the locks changed but it didn't even slow you down. So like, you're determined, right?”_

     He hums a quiet note before responding. _“ Correct.”_

   _“ Why?”_

_“ I am unsure.”_

_“ Oh. Well that's dumb. Well you know what, fuck it, I'm the only one home. If you take off your boots, you can actually come inside, you know. Last time you got mud all over the front carpet and my mom nearly beat me senseless.”_

     He glances down to his shoes. They are just, completely dirty. Out of all the things to forget. But, the civilian leaves, and he stands there, and thinks, and eventually simply leaves. There's nothing further inside waiting for him.

 

 

 

     You don't have to be _bad_. You don't have to be _this_ , you can be _whatever you want to be_. You can do _good_ things, if you _want_ to do them. You're _free._ You're free. You're free? _Free..._

 

 

    And in finale, the eight time, he breaks his streak of cautiousness and formality to the fact this was no longer home, he enters though the living room window. Why? Because this was home. It was his and theirs and everything inside it had changed and moved with time like the two of them. He hits the floor, hard, harder then he wanted, a dull clang as his arm strained in broken luster to support himself. Easing to his feet his eyes remained clamped shut, shuffling softly with his feet and an outstretched arm to ease his way into open space. Avoiding couches and pillows on the floor, objects he couldn't recognize tripping him up or shoving out of his way till he met a space with tile flooring. It was where it was supposed to be, in its place, with a sink and a counter. He dared not feel around for the material; his head was already pounding with conflicting objectality, his mind torn with memories failing to sync properly, like error codes carving into his flesh and his eyes, oh his eyes. No matter how many times he shook his head, pushed his wet hair from his face with the flesh of his palm. His other limb whined and hissed under the strain of itself, free wiring loose and slats of protective layering stripped from the places around his elbow and shoulder. Like skin removed from roadrash. Do good things, was it? That was a good thing, yes, it had to be. The way he lit up when he saw you do it. You loved the way he lit up when he saw you and it reminded you that you should go home. You told him you would go home.

     His reality was snapped back harshly by a muffled effeminate yelp, and footsteps pattering back away. Eyes snapped open he blindly and blinkingly looked about the room, pushing to ignore the misreading feedback his mind was sending him. He was not ordered, not instructed, he was not supposed to be here. This was not his. Nothing was his.

 

 

 

     When she fled, she removed herself from the situation entirely, out the front door and not looking back to lock or even close it. She was frantic at her neighbors door, home alone and afraid, because well, a huge dude just fell in through her window. However, it was extremely convenient for him. She recognized him immediately as well, flagging him and begging, _please, you're Captain America, right? I know you are, my brother is fucking obsessed with you, but you don't understand, my apartment._ And yeah, you know, you used to live here. Sort of, really. Shh, quiet. He's in there, right? _He might've left when I screamed, I'm sorry._ No, I can't expect you just to accept a stranger coming into your house, not in this neighbourhood. Wait, he's been there before? Often?? A pang of stupidity rises to the top of his throat. He'd never thought to come here, honestly. Too many good memories to sour. But he's definitely still in there. He told him he would be.

     Straightening before he enters, bringing keys into his hands to lightly jingle to express audibly his entrance. There's no attempt to sneak up on him, if he had learned anything, it was that you straight up could not sneak up onto him. He was playing, though he admitted was somewhat cruel, to his sense of lost senses. A desperation tactic, honestly, he was strung out of ideas. And he wanted him to remember. He had to remember. Well, and if he had come here often, he must have. And he had always entered every evening with the jingle of his keys and a soft click of shoes into the kitchen, where, occasionally, the other tenant would be waiting for him.

     When he turned the corner into the dark room, a flick of a finger to a familiarly placed light switch lead to the still startling but somewhat expected view of him slumped against the sidelong counters. His arm squealed in metal failure in an attempt to shade his eyes from the coming light, quickly to be replaced by his less injured true flesh.

     _“ Jesus no I'm not ready for that, turn that off.”_ he responds, acting off the back of his mind producing words beyond his conscious thought.

     “ _Oh, hard night tonight?”_ , he questions, voice forcing against nervous wavering. The switch returned to its darker position; feet tap across the floor in long strides to his side.

     _“ You know damned well what night I had.”_ , his voice is cut with hard breathing; eyes still squinting to gaze up. He has no reply to that, leaning down crouching carefully to his height. A hand reaches to press against buffered areas of his heavily worn jacket and he flinches. Every flinch causes a pause, but every release in his held breath causes him to touch again, feeling where the holes area, feeling where it's wet and sticky. “ I-, I just sort of. Got carried away. You know me right, it's just sort of what I do. Isn't it?”

   _“ Yeah Buck. You always get carried away.”_

 _“ That's what I thought.”_ , he shoves off the ground, weakly reaching up to the darkened figure he so blurrily recognized from that place in his mind that was producing his current responses. His arm is strained and tries to desperately past its electrical discharges and failures. In response he quickly lends his own arm, propping his up and easing it into the place it desired resting against the others shoulder. _“ I'm sorry. I'm tired, and I'm done. I think I'm done. So lets just stop this. I'm tired. I'm tired?”_ , he questions at the end, sighing at his loss. His head rolls back softly and he sighs again, as large arms wrap softly underneath his own and work to getting him on his feet.

     _“ Alright, we can just go. I'm alright with being done if you are. We'll just go somewhere quiet and dark, alright?”_ , and when his feet fail to support him, and his arms fail to hold onto their place around the others broad shoulders, his entire midsection is hefted up onto them instead. It knocks the wind from his already battered lungs for a moment, but he relaxes into it nicely; mostly against his will as that already mentioned tiredness sinks itself deep into his skull. That’s what happens when you let all your blood fall out, Bucky, you thought you would've learned that by now.

 

 

     He leaves quietly, thanking the girl and the now awake neighbour for not phoning the police quite yet, and that if they could keep it a bit on the low down for now, he would definitely make it up too them, and that this was just very important, secret business. They both agreed, mostly at the moment because everyone just wanted to go to bed, and that he was actually in fairly bit of a hurry at this point. _Shit, man, my brother is going to kill my for letting him miss all this._ Well, I'll come back later and explain it all, if you want. _Yeah, that would be good._ Have a good night, ladies. _You take that boy home now, he don't look so good._

 

 

     Home, yes. Home was where familiar was.


End file.
